Skip to main content

Click "Archive" or "Labels" in the sidebar to browse reviews, or use the search bar to look for a specific title.


Review: The Rest of Us Just Live Here

The Rest of Us Just Live Here The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Instead of focusing on what all of the "chosen ones" are up to--saving the world and whatnot--this book is about what the regular people of a little town are up to in the meanwhile.

What this book needed to do in order to be successful was give us a contemporary story in the foreground, showcasing normal people and their normal problems, while also making sure to prominently include the effects of the goings on of the chosen ones (hereby referred to as "the indie kids") happening in the background. We needed to see impact on our main characters' otherwise completely normal lives directly caused by those antics, but the contemporary story itself also needed to be compelling enough to keep the reader interested on its own. (view spoiler)

As you can see, there was a lot that this book needed to do correctly in order to actually work, so I was quite worried that the whole premise would end up just being a gimmick to get people to read a regular contemporary story. In the beginning I thought that that was actually what was happening. The title of each chapter acts as a short summary of what the indie kids are up to, and then every chapter is back to the contemporary story. In the beginning that was all there was, and it felt very disappointing. But luckily it then picked up.

What initially felt like being cucked ended up being really riveting. The foreground and background stories started to mingle, and having the background elements kept to being only exactly that--in the background--made each new tickle of information extremely gripping. This is definitely not just a regular contemporary story.

I was pretty surprised to see that this book deals with some pretty serious subjects like OCD and anorexia, so while the indie kids were fighting external demons, the main cast had their own internal demons to deal with. This is right in line with the parameters I set up prior to reading, and it was really insightful, eye opening, and educational to see the intimate struggles of someone suffering with OCD, and it made me appreciate and understand the disorder more.

4 stars because it was well executed, but in the end it didn't have that final push to completely and utterly blow me away.

View all my reviews
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Review: 寄宿学校のジュリエット（３）

寄宿学校のジュリエット（３） by 金田陽介 My rating: 5 of 5 stars Brb, crying. Not actually, though. Like, I didn’t shed any actual tears or even get close to it, it’s just that this series… is so good . The romance between Romeo and Juliet is still weirdly innocent, but the actual story is so engrossing and entertaining. It also seems like almost literally every single character is complex and interesting and multi-layered. (Only the background characters like Maru’s lackeys are undeveloped, but honestly they really don’t need any development anyway.) The relationships between characters keep getting more and more complex, and the situations that the characters have to deal with are also super juicy. This is such an addicting series. My initial problem with Romeo and Juliet’s relationship was that it seemed pretty unhealthy and one-sided to me. Later, I found it very weird how sexually immature they both are, and how un-intimate their relationship is. What is interest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Lulu Is a Rhinoceros

Lulu Is a Rhinoceros by Jason Flom My rating: 3 of 5 stars The second I saw the cover of this book and read the synopsis I immediately thought that this was going to be a book that uses animals to create an allegory about transsexuality, as another installment in the growing genre of kid’s LGBTQA+ books. The whole "that's what she sees when she looks in the mirror" business felt really on the nose, and I feel like the authors purposefully used this wording in order to generate buzz around this book. In actuality, this felt like any other normal kids book. You have a character who feels misunderstood by their peers, and so they go on a "journey" to find and/or prove themselves and eventually end up finding peace with who they are and/or a group who accepts them. To me, the story was told in a way that presented Lulu like any other silly character in a children's book that had a silly problem stemming from their silly misco...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Bossypants

Bossypants by Tina Fey My rating: 3 of 5 stars Let me set the scene: Last week I was in Phys Ed class playing the ol' badminton. Our school only has one gym, and my class 60 kids. So you can imagine how cramped it was. Each team had 3 people on the court at a time, and yes, it was a mess. And then one of my partners slammed me in the right eyeball with their racquet. My glasses broke into three pieces as they tumbled to the hardwood gym floor. This was the second time my face had been assaulted resulting in broken frames, so you could say I was a broken-glasses veteran. With my experience I didn't freak out, just was slightly annoyed. Nothin' some good old super glue can't fix, right? So I tried to continue playing but I quickly realized that I could no longer keep my eye open. It felt extremely irritated and even if I shut just the one and kept the other open, it still hurt. When I closed both of them, then it was a little better. Re...
Post a Comment
Read more